The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry recently was designated as the lead institution for a $1.9 million National Science Foundation award recognizing exemplary efforts to promote partnerships between academia and industry and to incorporate industrial research into graduate research and education.
The GOALI (Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry) award reflects UD's long-standing and close interaction with the DuPont Co., said chemistry department chairperson and principal investigator Jean H. Futrell.
The three-year grant will provide financial support for a total of five graduate students and three postdoctoral fellows at UD and its partner academic institutionsÐthe University of Maryland (Baltimore County) and Johns Hopkins University.
At UD, three new graduate students and two postdoctoral fellows will enter the program this fall. The postdoctoral fellows will divide their time approximately equally between UD's campus and DuPont's Central Research Laboratories, where they will work with collaborating industrial scientists. The fellows also will co-mentor the students, who will complete industrial internships with DuPont during their graduate training, Futrell explained. In this way, students will gain enough real-world experience to prepare them for successful industrial research careers in analytical chemistry. These rotations will be helpful to Ph.D.s who pursue academic careers, too, since they will have firsthand experience with current industrial research practices at the nation's largest center for chemical research and development, Futrell added.
Through UD's GOALI program, students will receive diversified training in mass spectrometry, a sensitive technique for determining the molecular structure and composition of complex samples.
"Our hope is to use this [program] as a model" for other chemical disciplines, Futrell told C&E News in March. Analytical chemistry in industrial R&D "should be informing synthetic chemists, engineers and decisionmakers what is doable and feasible by analytical measurements." The new educational program will prepare students for these kinds of professional careers.
UD's GOALI students and postdoctoral fellows also will participate in rotations with partner academic institutions. Cooperating principal investigators for the NSF grant are among the leading researchers in mass spectrometry in the nation, Futrell noted. For example, faculty members Douglas P. Ridge, Burnaby Munson and Murray V. Johnston III, chemistry and biochemistry, along with DuPont senior scientists Barbara Larsen and Charles McEwen, will work closely with UD's participants in the new program. Catherine Fenselau, University of Maryland, and Robert Cotter, Johns Hopkins, will direct the work of two students and one postdoctoral fellow appointed by the Baltimore institutions.
-Ginger Pinholster